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Share this Story: Egan: Group mailboxes have arrived in Kanata — and they'll be no returning to sender

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Oct. 20 is the day Canada Post makes a special delivery to 7,900 households in Kanata: the end of door-to-door mail.

Instead, about 500 community mailboxes have popped up, in clumps of three or four or five. They aren’t horrible looking things: the front typically has 16 slots, each corresponding to a municipal address, the top has a shed-style red roof, and the sides are a grey colour with some kind of swirly, leafy Mobius strip design.

Egan: Group mailboxes have arrived in Kanata — and they'll be no returning to senderBack to video

Still, we know what will happen. People will love and hate them. They will be tagged by graffiti artists and squirted at by dogs. They will be listening posts and litter traps. They will be shovelled around and sworn at.

It is Canada Post, after all, where the daily mail is disappearing and all change is excruciating.

Gerry Warner, 74, is trying to stay positive about the transition. He lives in a neatly kept house at the corner of Ardagh Gate and Ballantrae Way, which sounds like the depths of Glasgow, but is actually in Glen Cairn.

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His yard is so manicured and tidy it ought to have a white picket fence and, of course, it does, along a side yard. Between the fence and the road are three new boxes. He is slot 1-1.

“Why get all ticked off? It’s not going to change,” he said one day this week, after a compulsory tour of his new rear deck, which is lovely and rustic grey, by the way.

“We were joking about putting an easy chair out there and serving coffee and doughnuts.” Warner is lucky in the sense that, generally speaking, he doesn’t have to look at the boxes, as they are out of sight.

Doug Boyd, 59, a mechanical designer, is not so lucky. They are in plain view everytime he looks out his front door or window.

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He’s upset the installation was done without much consultation with neighbours.

“Did they accidentally forget to talk to the people who matter?”

He said he read about the possible location in a local paper in May and immediately tried to object. But when he finally worked through a series of wrong numbers and phone trees, he said he was given a too-bad, so-sad, ain’t- moving kind of answer.

Warner also said he knew nothing about the group boxes until the surveyors showed up.

Boyd’s objections are reasonable and oft-repeated. He’s concerned about the lack of lighting, the absence of a kiosk or trash can, the positioning of the boxes close to an intersection, the likelihood of litter and the lack of accommodation for parking.

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Unlike the boxes in new subdivisions, where they can be planned from scratch, these had to be worked in existing neighbourhoods, generally on city road allowances. In some spots, it looks to be a tight squeeze.

Boyd, a resident on Ballantrae since 1980, is concerned the boxes might create a traffic hazard as returning commuters quickly pull over to grab the mail on the way home. Throw in snow, ice and winter darkness and the problems are only compounded.

More than one of Boyd’s neighbours mentioned snow removal. We all know Ottawa is capable of having snow banks that resemble the Andes. Will Canada Post be able to clear a snowfall in time, then deal with the inevitable messing up by the city plow, hours later?

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(The potential for problems along nearby Rothesay Drive, a busier street, looks greater. There is a clump of five boxes on the edge of Holy Redeemer Church, with no parking on one side, much more traffic and a OC Transpo bus route.)

Well, the Crown corporation says it’s all under control. A spokesman said community mailboxes have been set up in 219 locations in Kanata, usually with between two and four units.

Jon Hamilton responds that Canada Post made face-to-face contact with more than 300 households and, based on feedback, adjusted the location of 79 sites.

“In some cases, we weren’t able to make the changes requested as they would diminish safety or convenience for those served by the box.”

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He also said that because Kanata residents expressed a preference for many smaller boxes, instead of a few big ones, it is expected most customers will walk to the new group mailbox.

Canada Post announced in December it would be phasing out home delivery in urban areas over the next five years, a move that will affect about five million households, or a third of its customer base.

So old Kanata, this is the future — every address gets a new number in the brave new world of get-less and more-fetch.

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